Lebanon Catholic wins District title

As Bob Kauffman emerged from a locker room underneath Hershey’s Giant Center last Thursday, he tended to an important matter.

The Linden Hall girls basketball coach tucked away his silver medal for safe keeping prior to meeting with a couple of visitors.

To be sure, it is a rare memento in Linden Hall’s long history.

Even if the Lady Lions didn’t get the result they wanted in Chocolatetown, suffering a 46-36 loss to Lebanon Catholic in the District Three Single-A finals, Kauffman was still looking at the big picture.

“We’ve been around for 275 years, the country’s oldest girls boarding school, and I told our girls that I don’t think any girl that’s ever been through there in three centuries has a silver District medal hanging around their neck,” Kauffman said. “So it’s a first for them, it’s a first for the school. We’re very proud of how hard our girls worked.”

Not that their work is done. The Lady Lions (18-5) are now preparing for a PIAA State first-round game, to be held this Saturday against District Five third-place finisher Southern Fulton (19-5) at Warwick at 4:30 p.m.

Linden Hall will need to eliminate some of the turnovers which cost them against the Beavers, who took home their fourth consecutive District title — and 20th overall.

In all, the Lady Lions had 33 giveaways, yet still took a 31-30 lead into the fourth quarter.

There, Lebanon Catholic opened the period on an 14-2 run — when senior 5-foot-10 forward Alexis Hill scored six of her game-high 15 points — and took a lead they never relinquished.

“Lebanon Catholic does what they do,” Kauffman said. “They came out, they pressured the ball, and they pressured the first pass. By then, they kinda knew what we were running and we weren’t able to surprise them. And they just came and took the game. We’ve got to give them credit.”

The Lady Lions — paced by juniors Tahrington Phillips and Hetta Saatman led Linden Hall with nine and eight points, respectively — deserve some credit too. After suffering a 32-point loss to the Beavers in December, Linden Hall gave them all they could handle this time.

Leading scorer Saatman picked up her second foul with 2:48 elapsed in the first and went to the bench for the rest of the quarter. But Linden Hall still took an 11-8 lead on Phillips’ drive at the 2:05 mark of the period.

Taylor Bossert’s ‘three’ with 1:09 left in the stanza put Lebanon Catholic up 15-11, but back-to-back buckets by Linden Hall’s Seraphina Thorpe tied it 15-all at period’s end.

“Seraphina Thorpe came off the bench and rebounded, played defense, made a couple buckets, and ran the court. She was ready to play,” Kauffman said. “We were able to get Hetta back in the game and I think our substitution pattern was good.”

The action slowed a bit after the first quarter, and two unanswered ‘threes’ early in the second by Jasmine Turner gave the Beavers their biggest first-half lead, 21-15.

A putback by Saatman cut Linden Hall’s deficit to 23-19 with :55 left in the half, and that’s how it stayed going into the break.

“We want to get 60, 65 shots a game up,” Kauffman said, “so part of it’s pace of the game. (Lebanon Catholic) will run when they have a great opportunity, but they like a slow pace. So we’re not going to get as many shots as we’d like.”

After shooting just 2-of-6 from the floor in the second quarter, Linden Hall created more opportunities in the third, while outrebounding the Beavers by a 14-7 margin — six of those by Saatman.

After Linden Hall 6-foot-0 sophomore forward Jumoke Adaramoye scored inside to tie it 24-all, the Beavers came back with the next four points. But then Saatman scored on a layup, Naomi Brabham knocked down a J, and Anya Miller hit from downtown, putting the Lady Lions up 31-28.

In the final 20 seconds of the quarter, Lebanon Catholic’s Neesha Pierre and Hill each hit the front end of a 1-and-1, but the Lady Lions maintained a 31-30 edge going to the fourth.

For the game, the Beavers were just 9-of-22 from the line, while Linden Hall went 2-of-6.

But the Lady Lions turned it over on their first three possessions of the final quarter, and Lebanon Catholic proceeded to score the first 10 points of the period before Phillips scored on a layup with 2:27 left to cut Linden Hall’s deficit to 40-33.

“We knew coming into the game we could have turnovers, but we couldn’t have live balls off turnovers,” Kauffman said. “And if the ball’s tipped and it stays on the court or it’s intercepted, they run out very, very quickly. That’s their favorite way to score points.”

Unfortunately for the Lady Lions, they could get no closer, as Lebanon Catholic outscored them 16-5 in the fourth quarter to seal its victory.

Asked if the Beavers’ experience in championship games helped them, Kauffman said, “There’s all kinds of excuses that one can make. But obviously, they’ve been here four years in a row, we’ve never set foot in this stadium, but the game’s played between the lines. And we had enough to win. We just didn’t get it done tonight … We’ve been closing the gap between the very elite teams in the State and what this shows is we’re almost there. Almost.”